An open source solution to a common collection problem: the Africa image and map portal
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-01-2019-0004 |
| Pages | 7-9 |
| Published date | 03 June 2019 |
| Date | 03 June 2019 |
| Author | Mia Partlow,Theresa Quill,Mireille Djenno |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
An open source solution to a common collection
problem: the Africa image and map portal
Mia Partlow, Theresa Quill and Mireille Djenno
Context
Indiana University (IU) is home to one
of the leading African studies programs in
the world. IU’s collection is among the top
academic Africana collections in the
USA. Introduced in 1965, IU’s collection
supports the study of sub-Saharan Africa
by collecting a range of material in all
major West European languages, as well
as official African state languages. The
Herman B Wells Library map collection
at Indiana University Bloomington
contains approximately 400,000 sheet
maps and is global in its scope. While a
major focus of the collection is Indiana
maps, the Herman B Wells map collection
covers nearly every country in the world,
including a strength in maps related to
Africa. At present, 40 per cent of the map
collection remains uncataloged, and while
it is organized by geographic region,
discovery of the uncataloged maps is
limited to in-person browsing.
Like many of its peer collections, the
Herman B Wells map collection contains
several large topographic map series.
These map series are usually published by
government agencies and can contain
thousands of sheets, organized in a grid
and labeled according to the individual
map’s location in the grid. At the Wells
Library, as is common with other map
libraries, these large topographic map
series are cataloged at the series level.
However, the maps are also individually
barcoded and have item records in the
library catalog that are associated with the
series and indicate the sheet name. It is
not uncommon for map libraries to lack
item-level records for large map series.
In the USA, the most familiar of
these topographic map series may be the
US Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5-min
topographic maps. While the USGS
maintains several online databases and
finding aids for these maps[1], that is
not always the case for map series of
other countries, particularly for
historical series. Instead, topographic
map series are accompanied by a paper
index map that shows a series grid, with
the footprint of each map labeled by a
sheet name. Sometimes these index
maps will include a basemap with the
underlying geography so that a user
might be able to determine which sheet
they would need for their area of
interest. Just as often, the index map
will lack this geography, indicating the
locations of sheets in relation to each
other, but leaving a user to guess which
sheets might contain information about
a specific location. In a typical map
library, these paper index maps will be
shelved along with the map series and
marked with the sheets owned by the
map library. In the case that an index
map is lost or otherwise unavailable,
these may be copied from another map
library and then re-marked with the
sheets owned by the receiving library,
the result of which is a difficult-to-
parse, xeroxed finding aid.
A solution to the difficulty of
navigating large map series is to create
digital versions of index maps. These
digital index maps operate like familiar
Web maps. A user can zoom and search
the map, click a specific area to get
more information in a pop-up and the
index sits atop a modern basemap,
clearly indicating the geographic extent
of the map series. A collaborative
project organized by The Colorado
School of Mines, Yale, and the
American Geographical Society Library
began to create and gather interactive
index maps into a Clearinghouse of
Indexes to Paper Map Series[2]. The
Clearinghouse addresses the issues of
missing or difficult-to-read paper index
maps by providing instructions for
creating interactive index maps with
geographic information systems (GIS)
and hosting them in a central place.
It became clear that the old paper
indexmapsheldbyIULibrariesdidnot
serve our users, and a modern solution
was needed. In addition to the
Clearinghouse, projects such as
GeoBlacklight provide open source
solutions to map discovery for digitized
maps, and IU contributes to the Big Ten
Academic Alliance GeoPortal, which is
built with GeoBlacklight. In the case of
the Wells Library’s historic map series,
we sought to pilot a lightweight discovery
platform for in-copyright maps, cataloged
only at the series level.
Maps of West Africa fell into this
category and their geographic coherence
formed a logical pilot sample. In addition
to the Wells map collection, stand-alone
maps of Africa form part of the archival
collections of African Studies material,
often coming to the Libraries as part of
larger donations of materials related to
Africa. Some of the maps donated to
Wells-based collections have been
earmarked for eventual incorporation into
the openly accessible research collection,
but many will remain with their original
collections, to which, for the foreseeable
future, there will only be mediated access.
In working to make the maps of
Africa discoverable via a lightweight
platform, we realized there was an
opportunity to connect them to other
Africa-related visual resources in the
Wells Library collection that had
geographic information attached – for
example, a political poster from Benin.
The result is the Africa image and map
portal (AIMP) (Figure 1).
Africa image and map portal origins
AIMP began as a summer
internship project by then Information
and Library Science graduate student
Mia Partlow to create interactive
index maps for topographic maps in
WestAfrica,heldbytheWells
Library, and contribute these to A
Clearinghouse of Indexes to Paper
Map Series[3]. After consulting with
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 4 2019, pp. 7-9, V
CEmerald Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-01-2019-0004 7
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